Books: Sundances with Wolves

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon didn't really get paid enough for Good Will Hunting. Their 1997 hit cost about $10 million and made well over $200 million worldwide, but their payout for writing and starring in the film came to little more than a million dollars combined. Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein later gave them each a $500,000 bonus check--a nice gesture, yet not quite what they felt they were owed. "You had to do some great accounting to hide net profits on that movie," grumbled Affleck. Nevertheless, they bided their time and learned to play Weinstein's game. When he needed them for a new project, they demanded $2 million in cash up front before signing on. Weinstein arrived at their meeting with a tote bag filled with Monopoly money, hurling it at Affleck before handing over the real checks. "We should have asked for four," says the actor now.

Stories like this rarely make the sunny spots on Entertainment Tonight, but they fill practically every page of Down and Dirty Pictures (Simon & Schuster; 544 pages), an expose of the independent-film business by longtime show-biz journalist Peter Biskind. The book is being released just in time for the Sundance Film Festival, that hotbed of indie-film deals that starts in snowy Park City, Utah, this week. Biskind--whose last book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, chronicled how the sex-drugs-and-rock generation revolutionized 1970s cinema--has done some exploratory surgery on the underbelly of the indie-film scene and found it has plenty of ulcers.

In any history of movies in the '90s--or in any room--Weinstein looms large. Biskind portrays Miramax's Brobdingnagian bully as a movie-loving maniac prone to physical violence, verbal attacks and financial shenanigans. Those sins are usually forgiven because his little studio in Manhattan's Tribeca has backed many of the best, most original flicks in recent memory, including Pulp Fiction, The English Patient and Chicago, and he ponied up big time when MGM got cold feet about co-funding Cold Mountain.

Biskind's book fleshes out Weinstein's psyche as well as his sicko behavior--and it ain't pretty. He's depicted delivering death threats like a movie mafioso, expecting fealty like a feudal lord and bringing woe upon anyone who asks for back-end profit participation. From Affleck to director Ed Zwick, friends and enemies alike unload their hysterical, often horrifying Harvey stories. Gasp as the mad mogul pushes aside his fellow Shakespeare in Love producers onstage at the Oscars! Cower as he throws stuff across the room! Wince as he chews out loyal employees! And the critics rave. "He's like a little Saddam Hussein of cinema," says Bernardo Bertolucci. "He's a true vulgarian," says Kevin Smith. "The devil himself. Satan! Lucifer!" says Spike Lee.